Wednesday, April 01, 2015

Chosen, Blessed and Free

by
Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz

As we approach one of the
many peaks of the Seder, we raise the matzah and recite Ha
LachmaAnya, opening the Maggid section. Speaking in
unfamiliar Aramaic, we begin by stating that the matzah that we are
about to eat at the Seder is the very same matzah that our
forefathers ate in Mitzrayim.

We continue with a
seemingly unconnected invitation to any and all poor people to come join our
meal. Anyone who needs a place to eat should come and share the Korban
Pesach with us.

We conclude with the
declaration that this year we are here, in golus, but next year we will
be in Eretz Yisroel. Now we are enslaved, but in the coming year we will
be free.

Why does this series of
statements open the discussion about Yetzias Mitzrayim? What is the
connection between the different sentences of the paragraph? Why do we hold up
the matzah?

Repeatedly, the Torahrefers
to the Yom Tov of Pesach as Chag Hamatzos. In davening and
Kiddush, we refer to the Yom Tov as YomChag Hamatzos.

Matzah is the symbol of Pesach. It encompasses all the
messages of the Seder. As we consider and contemplate the exalted moment
when our forefathers left Mitzrayim, we eat the very same matzah,
unchanged in formula and taste, at the very moment they did, on the same night,
year after year, century after century, going back all the way to the day our
nation was founded. With this bread, we became a nation. We left the shibud
Mitzrayim and emerged as bnei chorin.

The Gemara in Maseches
Brachos (17a) relates that Klal Yisroel tells Hashem, “Galui
veyodua lefonecha sheretzoneinu laasos es retzonecha, umi m’akeiv, se’or
shebe’isa. We wish to fulfill Your will, but the se’or shebe’isa
prevents us.” Rashi explains that se’or shebe’isa is the yeitzer
hara, which is machmitz us as yeast does to dough.

We can suggest that matzah
is referred to as lechem geulim not only because we ate it as we were
leaving Mitzrayim, but because man wants to be good, but the se’or
shebe’isa causes him to sin and veer off course. Matzah is lechem
geulim because it is baked without chimutz, without se’or.
One who subjugates his yeitzer hara is a ga’ul; he is redeemed
and free. Thus, Chazal state, “Ein lecha ben chorin ela mi she’oseik
baTorah.” The free man is one who is occupied with Torah.

The original matzah
didn’t rise because, as we say in the Haggadah, “Lo hispik lehachmitz ad
sheniglahaleihem Melech Malchei Hamelochim uge’olom.” Hashem
redeemed the Jewish people from Mitzrayim suddenly, before the dough they were
in the middle of baking for their trip was able to rise, and thus they were
left with matzah.

Matzah symbolizes freedom, because it came into existence amidst
the great urgency with which Hashem hurried His people out of Mitzrayim. The
cause - Jewish nationhood - didn’t allow for the bread to reach completion; it
didn’t allow for se’or and chimutz. Bread of freedom and a life
of freedom are both brought about by the same process, removal of se’or
and chimutz. A person cleanses his soul of sin by being preoccupied with
serving Hashem and studying Torah, and he thus earns his freedom from the
shackles life places upon him.

We open our Seder
with the statement that the whole night - the entire Yom Tov, in fact- is about the matzah, the food of freedom. The first phrase tells
us that it was “eaten when we left Mitzrayim,” in reference to our being
rushed out. It was baked without the se’or shebe’isah.

We then address the poor,
turning to those who are lacking in life and service to Hashem. We
proclaim to such people that they should join us in eating the matzah
and deriving the lessons it contains.

“Join us!” we say. “Eat and
learn from the matzah, and you will also be blessed and free along with
us and all those who enjoy the blessings of Pesach. You will be
impoverished no more.”

We continue by
acknowledging that while we are now unable to bring the Korban Pesach,
if we have indeed internalized the message of the matzah, we will be
able to offer Pesochim and Zevochim next year in Eretz Yisroel.

Finally, we acknowledge
that now we are still enslaved. The se’or shebe’isah still interferes
with our lives. We have been unable to expel it from our souls. We affirm our
commitment to examining the message, studying the lessons of “Ha Lachma Anya.”
Even though we are now captive to the yeitzer hara, we resolve that by
next year we will be free of his domination over us.

Simple, unconstrained, and
as free as the matzah.

The Klausenberger Rebbe
shared an experience from the concentration camps. He was placed in a barracks
with forty-two other inmates. Within a day of his arrival, forty of the men had
died of illness, famine or despair. There were two survivors, the rebbe
and a Budapest banker. They got to talking through the long, cold, lonely
night. Who could sleep in the valley of death?

The rebbe asked the
Hungarian if he was Jewish.

“Of course I am. How else
would have I ended up here?”

The rebbe inquired
what he did for a living.

The banker spoke about his
exceptional accomplishments, describing how he started as a clerk and rose to
the post of bank president. He was then appointed chairman of all the banks in
Hungary. “Have you not heard about how I stabilized the pengo? I was
featured in every newspaper, hailed as a savior.”

The rebbe admitted
that he had not.

“Are you sure you are
Jewish?” the rebbe asked again.

“No, I’m not Jewish,” the
banker answered.

He explained that he had
been born Jewish, but he made the decision to convert in order to further his
career. He told the rebbe that he didn’t regret the decision for a
moment.

“Besides achieving great
things in my work, saving the economy of my country, I married a wonderful
woman from a noble family.”

“Were you happily married?”
asked the rebbe.

“What a question! We were
blissfully married for thirty years. We had a beautiful home and went on grand
vacations. I bought her jewelry and gifts every few weeks.”

“So where is she?” the rebbe
wondered.

“She isn’t Jewish. Why
should she have to endure this nightmare too?”

“Wouldn’t you agree that a
good wife always accompanies her husband and doesn’t leave him alone to face
problems?” the rebbe probed.

The man turned the
conversation to his accomplished and wealthy children. One was a lawyer, one a
general, and the third a professor.

“Are they here with you?”
the rebbe continued to ask.

“No, of course not. They
are busy with their careers.”

“How can they abandon their
father at such a time?” asked the rebbe.

The conversation continued
in this vein throughout the bitter night.

The following night, it was
just the two men again, and the conversation resumed, the rebbe pointing
out that the man’s career and family weren’t enough to help him.

Finally, the financier
cried out, “What are you trying to do to me? Don’t you see how shattered I am?
Why do you persist in crushing my spirit even more?”

The rebbe appeared
unmoved, reiterating his points. “Your family, prestige, high-rolling
colleagues and accomplishments can’t do anything for you here, as you lay
hungry and cold.”

Late that night, the banker
broke. He wept and wept, barely able to speak. Finally, he said, “It was all a
mistake. I wanted to succeed and I turned my back on the way of my fathers and
grandfathers. I have nothing, absolutely nothing, to show for it...”

He sobbed and sobbed. With
dawn’s first light, the banker from Budapest breathed his last, his soul
joining the procession of souls that rose heavenward from that dreadful place.

The rebbe would
retell the painful story. “I felt such satisfaction, difficult as it was to
hurt him that way. His soul was slowly being cleansed, purified in a fire of
truth, layers being stripped off his neshamah as the spark came alive.
That mandied having experienced genuine teshuvah and returned
his soul to his Maker the way it had come down, a neshamah tehorah.”

The rebbe understood
the secret of matzah. It was all just se’or shebe’isah. The rebbe
took off the crust, the airy mounds of dough, and revealed the simple matzah,
a Jew’s essence, when all the distractions and diversions are peeled away.

Fortunate is he who doesn’t
require suffering or challenges to be reminded of his essence, but is able to
see it clearly in good times as well.

Back to the Seder.
With this deeper insight into matzah and its message, we can begin to
celebrate, beginning with genus and marching our way on to geulah,
a journey from Ha Lachma Anya through Afikoman.

After partaking of the Afikomanmatzah, we are forbidden to eat anything, for we must keep that message
fresh on our palates. We must not forget what we have learned and experienced
on this night.

The Ritva posits
that if a person ate matzah before chatzos, as is the obligation,
as long as the taste of matzah remains in his mouth, it is as if matzahumaror munachim lefonov and he fulfills the mitzvah of Maggid
as he discusses Yetzias Mitzrayim.

The Ritva opens our
eyes to what the taste of matzah really means. It is not only a
gastronomic phenomenon, but a spiritual one. Ta’ammatzah is the
experience of being connected to what matzah represents. And how
delicious that taste is!

On Erev Pesach, when
you grate the horseradish and tears flow down your cheeks, think of your
grandparents performing the same task, the same way, in some little town in
Eretz Yisroel, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary or Syria. When you go from room to
room with the candle in your hand, think of the strength of the Jewish chain
and remember that it is you who makes it strong. It is the faith-imbued
traditions that you pass on to your children that will guarantee you the merit
to welcome Eliyohu Hanovi when he arrives with his joyous, long-awaited
message.

When you sit surrounded by
family at the Seder, know that Jews have been doing this exact same
thing for thousands of years. You are a link in a golden chain, giving voice to
our faith and traditions as so many others before us have done. The same
tastes, smells, sounds and incantations have been filling the world ever since
our people left Mitzrayim. When we sing Vehi She’omdah, we hear our
parents, grandparents and forefathers all the way back to the Yam Suf.
Is there anything more comforting? Is there any sound stronger than that?

I recently held in my hands
a classic Haggadah printed in the year 1629. While for collectors it
represents a fascinating prize, for it is one of the earliest Haggados printed
with pictures, I was fascinated by it for another reason. I was thinking of the
astounding trip this wine-stained Haggadah must have taken over the past
400 years. Printed in the ghetto of Venice, it could have seen Jews in their
most prosperous times and during pogroms. It was around in times of a
comfortable golus and in times of bitter fright.

The Haggadah includes
the most beautiful sight of children reciting the Mah Nishtanah the same
way, century after century, always with shyness mixed with pride and cherubic
beauty on display for admiring parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles,
brothers and sisters. Is there anything more breathtaking? It is the future
sitting alongside the present, delving into the past.

The Haggadah has
seen us in times of strength and apparent weakness, but always with faith in
Hashem and our future. Always with the knowledge that come what may, we are the
am hanivchor, chosen, blessed and free.

A friend told me about his
colleague who assumed a rabbonus in a small shul in a New York
suburb. He arrived shortly before Yom Tov and noticed that as the kohanim
would ascend the steps in front of the aron kodesh for Birkas Kohanim,
a particular mispallel would leave his seat and step outside. He saw the
scene repeat itself each day of Yom Tov. On the last day, he asked the
man why he left shul for duchening.

Listen to the man’s answer.

Like so many others, he had
been torn away from his home and family by the Nazis and thrown into a cattle
car. He arrived at the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp and was exposed to a
new reality. The smell of death was everywhere.

As Pesach approached,
he heard whispered conversations. He observed gaunt faces flush with excitement
at the idea of having a Seder right there in the barracks. He recounted
to the rabbi that although they realized the dangers, they couldn’t bear the
thought of not at least having a semblance of a Seder, as desperate as
their situation was. They had neither matzah nor wine or a Haggadah.
Maror was in plentiful supply.

They sat in their barracks,
late at night, and recited what they could from memory. They then began singing
some of the familiar Seder songs. Their spirits defied their dark
surroundings, the mitzvah of sippurYetzias Mitzrayim lifting
them above the reality of danger and fear, taking them to a place of faith and
joy. Their raised voices were overheard by a chasidishe rebbe who was in
the camp. He had been heading to his own barracks when he heard the muffled
sounds of a Seder. He entered and sat down with the other walking
skeletons and joined the chorus.

Shortly thereafter, their
celebration was interrupted by stomping boots, barking dogs, and shouted
curses. The feared sadistic monster, S.S. Commander Amon Goeth, stormed in. He
was aghast that such a scene was taking place in his barracks. “Who put this
together?” he barked.

Fearing for their lives,
each man looked at the others. Nobody responded. They knew that the culprit
would be killed.

“I will kill all of you if
the ringleader doesn’t accept responsibility for his crime. I will not stand
for this disobedience,” Goeth shouted.

“The rebbe stood
up,” the man recounted. “He said that he had hatched the idea and put it
together.”

“Sleep well tonight,” the
Nazi said, “for tomorrow I will show you Jews what happens to those who disobey
me.”

“On the first day of Yom
Tov,” the man tearfully recounted, “the rebbe was led to the
gallows, which were visible to the entire camp. We were all forced to line up
and watch the awful spectacle.

“They stood the rebbe
on a chair and fastened a noose around his neck. The rebbe thenaddressed
his Nazi captor. ‘Every human being knows that a man condemned to death is
given his last wish. I want a moment to address the people. I am a kohein.
I bless my flock on the holidays. Today is a holiday. Please let me bless them
one last time.”

His wish was granted.

“The kohein started to recite the timeless brachos.

“Yevorechecha...

“Ignoring the noose around
his neck and the place he was in, the rebbe sang out the first word.

“The incensed Nazi shot
him. The chair was pulled out from under him. The rebbe had duchened
for the last time.”

The manfinished his
tale.

“Decades have passed since
then, but every year, on the first day of Pesach, I remember the rebbe
and his Birkas Kohanim. I go out because I don’t ever want to forget
that ‘Yevorechecha.’

“When I look in the siddur
and see the word ‘Yevorechecha,’ I want to hear the rebbe’s
voice. In my head, I still hear his voice, and in my heart, I’m still getting
those brachos.”

Just as that man clinged to
the fragment of memory of the Rebbe’s duchening, so must we cherish the
taste of matzah. If we manage to hold on, keeping it safe and treasured,
living with its message that we are geulim at heart, capable of
transcending limitations imposed by the se’or shebe’isah and the
challenges of golus, then we will remain bnei chorin.